If "the true man is to be revealed, if we are to know him as he was, and especially if we are to know the influences that molded him and so profoundly affected him for good or evil, we must begin at the beginning and follow him through his struggles, his temptations, his triumphs." It might be better to start "in the cradle," or even forty years before he was born, for, as modern biology teaches us, nature is stronger than nurture and race counts for much. Certainly this man can never be understood if removed from the environment which time and circumstance gave him; he needs the historical background, furnished in part by his contemporaries, some of whom were rivals with whom he had often to struggle to make his way. In recounting this history, in many cases hitherto unwritten, we must recognize the proverbial difficulty of tracing human motives to their proper source, and endeavor to form no harsh judgments without ample basis in documentary or other evidence.
No more ardent and loyal American than John James Audubon ever lived. His adopted country, which he would fain have believed to have been that of his actual birth, was ever his chief passion and pride, and for him the only abode of sweet content. Few have seen more of it, of its diversified races, climates and coasts, its grand mountains, its noble lakes and rivers, its virgin forests and interminable prairies, with all the marvelous stores of animal and plant life which were first truly revealed to the pioneer woodsman, artist and naturalist. None has been more eager to hand down to posterity, ere it be too late, a true transcript of its wild and untameable nature while, as he would say, still fresh from the Creator's own hand. Audubon's beneficent influence during his long enforced residence abroad, as a representative of American energy and capacity, can hardly be measured, while in his own land few were more potent in bringing the nation to a consciousness of its unique individuality and power.
Audubon, as has been said, saw nature vividly colored by his own enthusiasm, and he never looked at her "through the spectacles of books." His writings, however unpolished or written with whatever degree of speed, have the peculiar quality of awakening enthusiasm in the reader, who, like the youth poring over Robinson Crusoe, feels within him a new ardor, in this instance, for hunting and studying birds and for leading a life of adventure in the wilderness. It would be as unjust to judge of Audubon's rare abilities as a descriptive writer from the letters, journal jottings and miscellaneous extracts given in this work, as to weigh his accomplishments as an artist from his itinerary portraits or his early sketches of animals in crayon point and pastel. Those cruder products of his pen and brush, however, as the reader will find, possess a high degree of interest from the light which they throw on the development of his character and art, as well as from their personal and historical associations. His best and only finished literary work, the Ornithological Biography, in five large volumes, with the revisions and additions which later appeared, abound in animated pictures of primitive nature and pioneer life in America as well as vivid portraits of the birds and other characteristic animals.
A good illustration of Audubon's habit of blending his own experiences with his biographies of birds is found in the introduction to his account of the Common Gannet:
On the morning of the 14th of June 1833, the white sails of the Ripley were spread before a propitious breeze, and onward she might be seen gaily wending her way towards the shores of Labrador. We had well explored the Magdalene Islands, and were anxious to visit the Great Gannet Rock, where, according to our pilot, the birds from which it derives its name bred. For several days I had observed numerous files proceeding northward, and marked their mode of flight while thus travelling. As our bark dashed through the heaving billows, my anxiety to reach the desired spot increased. At length, about ten o'clock, we discerned at a distance a white speck, which our pilot assured us was the celebrated rock of our wishes. After a while I could distinctly see its top from the deck, and thought that it was still covered with snow several feet deep. As we approached it, I imagined that the atmosphere around was filled with flakes, but on my turning to the pilot, who smiled at my simplicity, I was assured that nothing was in sight but the Gannets and their island home. I rubbed my eyes, took up my glass, and saw that the strange dimness of the air before us was caused by the innumerable birds, whose white bodies and black-tipped pinions produced a blended tint of light-grey. When we had advanced to within half a mile, this magnificent veil of floating Gannets was easily seen, now shooting upwards, as if intent on reaching the sky, then descending as if to join the feathered masses below, and again diverging toward either side and sweeping over the surface of the ocean. The Ripley now partially furled her sails, and lay to, when all on board were eager to scale the abrupt side of the mountain isle, and satisfy their curiosity.[2]
Audubon's accounts of the birds are copious, interesting and generally accurate, considering the time and circumstances in which they were produced. When at his best, his pictures were marvels of fidelity and close observation, and in some of his studies of mammals, like that of the raccoon (see [p. 182]), in which seemingly every hair is carefully rendered, we are reminded of the work of the old Dutch masters and of Albrecht Dürer; notwithstanding such attention to microscopic detail, there is no flatness, but the values of light and shade are perfectly rendered. In his historical survey of American ornithology, Elliott Coues was fully justified in designating the years 1824-1853 as representing the "Audubonian Epoch," and the time from 1834 to its close as the "Audubonian Period." "The splendid genius of the man, surmounting every difficulty and discouragement of the author, had found and claimed its own.... Audubon and his work were one; he lived in his work, and in his work will live forever."[3]
There is no doubt that Audubon regarded an honest man as the quintessence of God's works, and though he sometimes set down statements which do not square with known facts, this was often the result of lax habits, or of saying what was uppermost in his mind without retrospection or analysis. When memory failed or when more piquancy and color were needed, he may have been too apt to resort to varnish, but for everything written on the spot his mind was as truth-telling as his pictures. In considering the good intent of the man, his extraordinary capacity for taking pains, and his vast accomplishments, criticism on this score seems rather captious. On the other hand, when it came to dealing with his own early life, that was a subject upon which he reserved the right to speak according to his judgment, and in a way which will be considered later.
Audubon left England to settle his family finally in America in the autumn of 1839, when he was fifty-four years old, and since he lived but twelve years longer, probably few are now living who retain more than a childish memory of his appearance in advanced age. Many Londoners will recall an odd character, an aged print dealer who used to sit alone, like a hoary spider in its web, in his little shop in Great Russell Street, close to the British Museum, and another of similar type, who may still haunt a better known landmark, the old "naturalist's shop" in Oxford Street, not far from Tottenham Court Road and but a minute's walk from the spot where most of Audubon's Birds were engraved. Both had seen the naturalist walk the streets of London and had known him in business relations. He occasionally strolled into the old naturalist's shop, which has been occupied by father and son for nearly a century. The son, then a young clerk, is now (1913) the crabbed veteran who still waits on customers but never waits long; should you hazard a question before making a purchase, he will roar like the captain of a ship and leave you to your own devices; but show him money and the change in his demeanor is wonderful; his hearing improves, his tone softens, and he may recount for you what he remembers of times long past, which is not much. Audubon in the thirties seemed to him like an aged man, an impression quite natural to a youth. He also remembered seeing Charles Waterton, Audubon's declared enemy and supercilious critic, William Swainson, his one-time friend, and William MacGillivray, his eminent assistant; that they were great rivals expressed the sum of his reflections. He recalled the time when Oxford Street was filled, as he expressed it, with horses and donkeys, and of course knew well the old Zoölogical Gallery, No. 79 Newman Street, in which for a time Robert Havell & Son conducted a shop in connection with their printing and engraving establishment. The latter, when moved by Robert Havell, Jr., to No. 77 Oxford Street, was nearly opposite the old Pantheon, which still lingers, and not far from the corner of Wrisley Street, the present site of Messrs. Waring & Gillow's large store.
We already possess several biographies of Audubon, and many of his letters of a personal or scientific interest and most of his extant journals, though but a fraction of those which originally existed, have been published. "America, my Country," has not forgotten him. Mount Audubon rises on the northerly bound of Colorado as an everlasting reminder of the last and grandest of all his journeys, that to the Missouri River in 1843. American counties and towns,[4] as well as parks and streets in American cities, bear his name. At least four of his beloved birds have been dedicated to him. In 1885, thirty-four years after his death, the New York Academy of Sciences began a popular movement through which a beautiful cross in marble was raised in 1893 above his grave in Trinity Cemetery.[5] The "one hundred and twenty-fifth anniversary"[6] of the naturalist's birth was celebrated in New York in 1905, and at the American Museum of Natural History an admirable marble bust of Audubon was unveiled on a notable occasion, December 29, 1906, when similar honors were paid to Louis Agassiz, Spencer Fullerton Baird, Edward Drinker Cope, James Dwight Dana, Benjamin Franklin, Joseph Henry, Joseph Leidy, John Torrey, and Alexander von Humboldt. On November 26, 1910, a statue of Audubon, after an admirable design by the veteran sculptor, Edward Virginius Valentine, of Richmond, Virginia, was unveiled in Audubon Park, New Orleans, where the naturalist, with pencil in hand, is represented in the act of transferring to paper the likeness of a favorite subject. He also occupies a niche in the Hall of Fame at New York University.